


Family Business: Five Things That Never Happened to Dick Grayson

by Lucy Gillam (cereta)



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-26
Updated: 2015-06-26
Packaged: 2018-04-06 05:58:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4210629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cereta/pseuds/Lucy%20Gillam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five lives Dick Grayson didn't live.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. That Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeeze

Dick had the trailer door halfway opened before he remembered that this was The Day. By then it was too late: Billy would have heard him. Of course, Billy would have heard him when he was leaving the animal tent, but there was no point in making the kid feel worse than he already did by conspicuously avoiding him.

Sure enough, Billy was slumped at the kitchen table in the kind of funk that only twelve-year-old boys and very old dogs could actually pull off. Dick managed to keep his sigh to himself. He knew what was required, here. There were certain things that big brothers simply didn't get out of.

"Rough day, kiddo?"

Billy didn't even bother to raise his chin from the table. "Like you don't know already. I heard you guys arguing about it the other night."

This time Dick did sigh. He supposed there was no use in telling Billy yet again about the difference between just naturally overhearing things and eavesdropping, or how much more crucial that was when your hearing was at least five times more powerful than most people's. Instead, he just made a mental note to remember this the next time he and his parents were arguing about … other things.

"At least you were on my side," Billy added, although the thought didn't seem to cheer him much.

"Well, yeah, but," Dick sighed again. Here came the big brother part. "The truth is, they're right."

That got Billy's chin off the table. "What? No, they're not. I've been totally careful, and I don't show off or anything and…"

"And sooner or later you're gonna slip up." Dick wedged himself into the tiny breakfast nook that was rarely used for eating anymore. Since Billy had his last growth spurt, fitting a second pair of legs under the table with his, let alone a third and a fourth, had become an exercise in creative geometry. In almost everything else, Billy looked enough like Dick and their father to make the story of "long lost cousin, tragically orphaned" an easy sell, but people were already joking about him getting his height from his mother.

"Look," he said, "this stuff you can do, it's amazing. And so far, we've managed to keep it believable. But dude: you flew at practice last week. And I don't mean the way we usually fly. I mean you flew."

Billy flushed. "It wasn't really flying," he mumbled.

"Okay: you defied the laws of gravity for longer than an audience is going to buy even a Flying Grayson doing. I'm not saying you did it on purpose, but it happened. And we can't afford to have something like that happen in performance."

At this, Billy flushed even deeper. "You're just mad because I'm getting better than you. I did the quad younger than you did!"

Dick took a deep breath, reminding himself that he was the adult in this situation. Okay, adult by two months, but still an adult. Trust a little brother to find the sorest spot he could possibly pick. Because that had kind of sucked at the time, and he had spent a long time rationalizing that Billy had an unfair advantage, and he had maybe not been the best big brother in the world, being less than completely happy about Billy's astounding accomplishment.

None of which was really the point.

"Do you really think they wouldn't do this if they didn't think they had to?" he asked. "I mean, if nothing else, they can't keep flying forever themselves. You don't think they wanted us to carry on the act together?"

Billy mumbled in response. Dick didn't catch all of it, but the words "real son" slipped through.

"Oh, you are not gonna play that card. Dude, the whole point is that they want to keep you. Do we really need to go over the whole ending-up-as-a-lab-rat thing again?" Not, he added silently, that it wouldn't help if Mom and Dad would supply the rest of the reason for their fears. They kept saying it wasn't the right time yet; Dick personally had his doubts that there was ever a right time to tell someone that they had quite literally dropped out of the sky.

Billy's sulk let up enough for him to roll his eyes. "No."

"If they didn't love you, you doofus, they'd have you out there doing quintuple somersaults. The kind of money they could make off that…"

This time the eye-roll was accompanied with a grudging smile. "Pop Haley would cream."

Dick vaguely contemplated chiding Billy for his language, then remembered who he'd learned that phrase from. "More than once. Look, just cut them some slack, okay? I mean, sure, you can use the guilt to get a new bike, maybe, but don't go overboard."

"I'll limit it to a ten-speed." Billy's grin faded, but his frown this time was thoughtful rather than sulking. "So…what am I supposed to do, then? I mean, like with my life and stuff."

"Gee, I dunno, you could maybe consider going to college. Hey, maybe you could even be a writer," he added, thinking of the three notebooks Billy had filled over the last year. He didn't know for sure what the kid was writing - privacy was rare enough in a trailer that they all respected what little they had - but there was no question that he loved to write.

Billy flushed again, although this time it looked like embarrassment rather than anger. "Yeah, maybe." He looked out the window to where John and Mary Grayson were approaching the trailer. "I think I'll go start working on that bike." He slid out of the breakfast nook, then turned back. "Thanks."

"No problem. And hey - shoot for the twelve speed."

Billy was out of the trailer in three steps, and Dick released a huge breath. Sooner or later, they were going to have to come clean with him. He knew about that night in Gotham when the meteor shower had disrupted the performance. He also knew that it had roughly corresponded with his arrival. And he even knew that all was not quite above-board about his adoption; Mom and Dad had explained that much to justify their fears of his being taken away.

Billy also knew that the meteor shower had saved his new family's lives. No amount of effort could keep him from hearing from the other circus folk that the trapeze lines had been found to be cut, and that had the Flying Graysons performed that night as scheduled, disaster would almost certainly have ensued.

Billy didn't know about the ship that John Grayson had hastily hidden in the elephant tent that night, later burying it where no one (they hoped) would ever find it. And he didn't know that it had been eight-year-old Dick who'd insisted that this strange little boy who looked so much like a Grayson belonged with them, that the cut trapeze lines were surely a sign of how much he was meant to be with them.

They were going to have to tell him sooner or later. It had been a sore spot between Dick and his parents since Billy was ten, and it was only getting worse as his abilities grew.

When he's fifteen, Dick swore silently. If they haven't told him by the time he turns fifteen, I'll take him to where the ship is buried and show him.

It was the sort of thing a big brother would do.


	2. Lights Going Down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The lights in the Batcave turn off.

The cave almost looked like a cave again.

Not entirely, of course. Nothing could make the flattened surfaces look completely natural, particularly when one of them led out of what was clearly a man-made tunnel. But the computer was gone, and the training equipment that hadn't been moved upstairs for Dick's physical therapy had also been removed. When Dick asked what had happened to the Batmobile, Bruce had patiently explained how he and Alfred and someone else whose name Bruce didn't use had taken it apart and arranged for most of the parts to find their way into other cars and machines. The parts that were too recognizable had been melted down and made into other things.

It had really been more detail than Dick wanted, but he got the idea that it was very important to Bruce that he know the Batmobile was gone forever.

Just like it was important to Bruce that he be here while Bruce and Alfred burned his costumes. 

They'd had to use some kind of weird chemical to make the fabric burn, and it gave off a smell that was only a little less nasty than the one in the elephant tent after Eleanor did her business. Dick wrinkled his nose a few times, but didn't say anything. He wasn't quite sure he understood why it was important that he be here, but it was, so he wasn't going to complain. 

Particularly not when it meant being out of bed for the first time in the month since Tony Zucco's goons had descended on him with their baseball bats. 

Not that he remembered much of the first week or so. Just blackness, and some voices drifting in and out. The first one he really remembered was a woman's voice that was alternately gentle and angry, although even in his fog, he knew she wasn't angry with him. 

_"…you honestly believe your parents would have wanted this for you, you can't really believe they'd be anything but appalled to see that little boy lying there."_

Dick later learned that the voice belonged to Dr. Leslie, a friend of Bruce's dad who'd helped Alfred take care of Bruce after his parents were killed. She'd been over every day since Dick woke up, checking his bandages and taking his temperature. He had a feeling she'd been there most of the time he was asleep, and that she'd been mad at Bruce for most of that time, too. 

She didn't seem to be mad at him anymore. 

Alfred's voice was the one he'd heard most, talking to him in the same dry, even way he talked about Bruce's dinner engagements. 

_"Really, Master Richard, you ought to consider opening your eyes for a bit longer than that. I understand daytime television can be quite involving when given the chance."_

He'd spoken to Bruce in that same tone. 

_"…risk of invoking a cliché, sir, might I suggest that actions speak louder than words. If you truly wish the boy to give up these activities, perhaps a more appropriate role model is needed."_

Bruce… Dick hadn't heard Bruce's voice much, not even when Dr. Leslie or Alfred were talking to him. He knew Bruce had spoken to him a few times, but he could never quite remember what he'd said. Mostly what he remembered was Bruce's hand holding his, or brushing hair off his forehead. He knew that Bruce had been there. 

But he couldn't remember much more, which kind of sucked, because he knew something important had happened while he was unconscious. Exactly what, he wasn't sure, but he knew two things: Tony Zucco was in jail – if he was out of the hospital yet -- and Dick hadn't seen Batman since. Judging by how often Bruce had been around, neither had anyone else. 

And now the Batmobile was gone, and the cave almost looked like a cave, and Bruce and Alfred were burning Batman's costumes in a large metal drum that looked like it had come from some back alley. 

"You're really not going to be Batman anymore?" he'd asked when Bruce had first explained two weeks ago. 

"I'm really not going to be Batman anymore." 

"Oh." Dick had mulled it over, trying to decide which of the hundred questions he had to ask first. "Does that mean I can't stay here anymore?" 

Bruce has seemed genuinely startled by the question. "No, of course not. Why would you think that?" 

"I don't know. I just thought… I thought me being here had something to do with Batman." 

"Well, it… You know, maybe it did. But it doesn't anymore. It _does_ mean no more nightly field trips for you, young man." 

Of course, the sight of Bruce trying to play a sitcom dad had given Dick the giggles, which had actually made Bruce _smile_ , a real smile, not like the kind he gave when he was on the news at some charity thing. 

Still, when Dick had finally gotten around to asking him why, he'd only said that he would explain "someday." Dick had tried asking Alfred what had happened, but he'd been even less forthcoming, saying something about Master Bruce's priorities changing. 

It made him wonder how stupid they thought he was. 

Dick stifled a yawn as the last costume went into the barrel. Of course, Bruce caught him. 

"Alfred, why don't you finish up? I think somebody's had enough for one night." 

"I have not!" Dick protested. 

"Dick." The costume might have been gone, but the "you will not argue" voice was still there. 

"Aw, man." 

Bruce turned to Alfred. "Turn out the lights when you're done. We'll finish sealing it tomorrow." 

"Very good, sir." 

Bruce scooped Dick up from the chair he'd set him on an hour ago and started up the stairs. 

"'m really not that tired," Dick mumbled. It was a lie, but it was the kind of thing you said when your parents sent you off to bed, so he figured he should say it now. 

"Humor me," Bruce replied. 

"Yeah, I c'n do that." 

Dick's eyes started to close, and the last thing he saw before they did was the first set of lights going out in the Batcave.


	3. Hanging Work

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Selina had always said he'd get in trouble one day.

The security system at Baylor's Fine Jewelry was almost pathetically easy to disarm. The cameras took a single snip to disable, and no one would even know until morning. The actual alarm system was even weaker. A suspicious mind might think that perhaps they _wanted_ to be robbed, and start wondering about their insurance coverage and the current level of business.

Not that Dick would ever think such thoughts. 

Instead, he just pondered how seldom people really expected intrusion from above. Which, given Gotham's somewhat…unusual population, just went to show that people never learned. It was the sort of thing one pondered while hanging upside down over a case of diamond bracelets.

The new T-lines were a vast improvement: great flexibility, good texture. The old ones had frequently left vivid red marks on his skin where he slid, to the point that costume design had become a constant choice between the thinness required for flexibility and the thickness required for protection.

And frankly, he had enough costume issues as it was. Or more to the point, his mentor did. She had not exactly been pleased with his choices.

_"Yes, black, very practical, but really, it lacks style, don't you think? Hardly memorable."_

_"And I want people to remember what I look like, why?"_

Dick adjusted the lenses on his goggles to check for an alarm system on the case, and made a light noise of disapproval. Someday, people would learn that horizontal lasers weren't really that effective.

He twisted up from the waist to retrieve a few necessities from the bag hanging near his feet. Hanging work was really the only skill at in which he'd always been better than Selina, the one place where he'd managed to impress her from the start. A few (fairly humiliating) lessons had taught him that the lock-picking skills he'd learned from Andre the Amazing, which had impressed the other boys at the Gotham Children's Home enough to avoid a few fights, were not nearly as amazing as Andre the Amazing had made them sound. Turned out escape artists only had to learn to pick their own locks.

Selina had eventually come to accept the plain black bodysuit (although he swore sometimes that she'd made alterations when he wasn't looking; he certainly hadn't made it to fit _quite_ like that). The argument about a moniker had been longer.

_"We're back to not wanting people to remember me at all. Why do I need some kind of code name? I mean, people with weird names in this town are usually a few barrels short of a circus -- Present company excepted."_

_"Darling, you really are taking all of the fun out of this."_

Which he hadn't, not really, because it _was_ fun, but "fun" and "jail" did not equate in his mind, nor did "fun" and "stupid." 

The argument had only gotten worse when he'd let it slip that his mother had called him Robin.

_"Oh, but it really is perfect! Cat and bird, can you imagine?"_

He could, all too well. What he couldn't do was explain to her the ice that formed in his stomach when she suggested it, or the way the faint, disapproving specter of his parents howled at the thought of using his mother's name for him as a criminal alias.

Or the nagging sense -- no, certainty -- that they would have wanted him to use his gifts and training for nobler purposes.

He almost had the last mirror in place when he heard the faint whistle in the air above him. He caught himself on the case just as the T-Line was severed, managing to pull off a graceful landing.

The same could not be said for the final mirror.

"Well, that set off the alarm," he said without turning around.

"That was the point."

"Really?" Dick turned towards the shadows where, as near as he could guess, the object and the voice had both come from. "And here I thought it was to drop me on my head." 

"That was a side benefit." The Batman finally stepped into the faint light. His costume had changed in the years since Dick had first encountered him during a routine museum heist, and he chose to believe it was Selina's influence that caused him to notice that.

Dick sighed dramatically. "Yeah, but now I'm going to have to run, and you're going to have to chase me, which, okay, is _fun_ , but really, there are only so many variations on the theme we can enact." Including ones that ended with him in jail, and he well knew how much he'd been pressing his luck and Batman's unpredictable Catwoman exceptions lately. This was the third time in six months he'd been face to face with the Bat, which was far, far above average.

"You could always turn yourself in."

Dick pretended to consider the idea. "It has novelty on its side, but I can't say I like the…"

Okay, someday he would figure out how a man that big moved so damn fast. He barely had time to flip over the cases before Batman was occupying his previous airspace.

"You know," Dick said, pausing to lift himself over the payment counter, "sometime you'll have to explain to me how all this works. I mean, I know you've got a…special relationship with Catwoman, but that really doesn't explain how often you're showing up during fairly minor robbery attempts lately. She can't figure it out either. Said she thought you'd be trying harder when I was a kid and thus redeemable." Dick raised an eyebrow. "You don't actually think I'm some kind of rival, do you? Because…"

A blunt object that Dick would have bet his haul was bat-shaped hit his midsection, knocking him over and stealing his breath.

"Or," he wheezed, pulling himself up, "some day I'll just learn to keep my mouth shut." Apparently the talking part of the encounter was over. Time to flee.

Dick was trying to decide which direction to move in when the ground made the decision for him, pitching loudly up and to left. He turned just in time to hit the glass case with his shoulder instead of his face, and it occurred to him that this would have been a much simpler solution in the first place.

"What the…" He'd seen some pretty hyper security systems, but never ones that caused the ground to move, and oh, look, was that a beam coming down towards him?

A faint grunt sounded in his ear as Batman first landed on top of him, and then rolled the both of them out of the way of the falling beam. When the dust had almost settled, Dick found himself pinned to floor under something only slightly less heavy than the beam would have been. Of course, the beam wouldn't have been staring down at him from behind a mask.

"You know," he said, glancing around the wreck that had once been a jewelry store, "of all the ways I pictured something like this happening – and I have pictured it – this was not…"

A faint, high pitched scream from above them cut him off, and the two men looked at one another.

"Apartments above us," Dick said, and a second later both were moving.

The condominiums above Park Plaza were being marketed as a new haven of the rich and stylish after the plague had tainted Babylon Towers. Fortunately, many of the units were still being remodeled and upgraded, and thus were empty. Dick had been grateful for this earlier in the evening, as it had made his progress into the store easier. Looking around at the destruction outside the store, he was grateful now for another reason.

The plaza was a chaos of broken glass and hanging wires, the floor jutting unevenly up in more than a few places. The escalators down to the plaza's ground level still stood, but chunks of concrete were missing from the walls of the atrium.

"Holy… What happened? Was this a bomb or something?"

"Earthquake," was the grunted reply.

"Earthquake? In Gotham? Since when do we… Never mind. I'm guessing the elevators are out. There's a private stairway at the back of the plaza" 

Finding a clear path to the stairway was easy enough. At least, it was until the ground began to move again.

"Watch it!" Dick pulled Batman to the side as a chunk of the atrium wall fell, crashing and embedding itself in the spot of floor where the Bat had been. "You know, you should consider a mask with better peripheral vision."

Batman merely resumed running.

"You're welcome!" Dick called after him before following.

Batman already had the door open by the time Dick reached him. Dick chose not to ask how he'd gotten through the fairly sturdy lock. 

What could be seen from doorway was bad enough. Although pieces of the stairs still clung to the wall, huge gaps could be seen all the way up. As if to reinforce the badness, the shriek again reverberated down, this time recognizable as a child's voice. "See, if you hadn't cut my line, this wouldn't be a problem."

Batman pulled something that looked like a small gun from his belt, and shot it up into the stairwell. Dick heard the unmistakable "thunk" of metal embedding itself in concrete, and turned to see Batman testing the strength of a T-Line.

"I should go first," he heard himself saying. Before Batman had a chance to object, he added, "I weigh less than you do. Anything that's still unstable will be less likely to collapse. If you go first and fall, I don't have a line to get up."

Batman said nothing, but with painfully obvious reluctance handed over the rope.

Making the necessary adjustments to his goggles for seeing in the greater darkness of the stairwell, Dick swung out. He used the line to get to the first intact chunk of staircase, then began flipping upwards, using the line only occasionally for support.

"That scream--" Flip. "--couldn't have come--" Twist, push off wall. "--from more than one or two floors up." Land on the hands, bounce off quickly. "The insulation isn't great here--" Grab the doorframe and steady. "--but it's not that bad." 

As soon as he opened the door to the first floor of condos, Dick could hear childish sobbing. Turning into the hall, he threw the rope down to Batman. "Watch the fourth outcropping; it's ready to come down," he called, and began running towards the sound. 

The hallway was a bit more intact than the lower floors had been, but there were still gaps. The doorframes, however, were all standing, and Dick had to resist the impulse to break down every door in order. The need to act _now_ was one that Selina had spent years training out of him. 

_"You have tunnel vision. Probably comes from always aiming at a pair of hands, but you don't notice other things around you, and someday going for the obvious is going to get you into big trouble."_

Dick forced himself to follow the sound. He'd almost reached the corner when he heard Batman reach the doorway and start after him.

"Mommy!" The sound was coming from further down the second hall.

"That's it, kid," Dick muttered. "Just keep talking." A few more whimpers led him to #312 just as Batman caught up. Without a word, the two men faced each other and hit the door with their shoulders, shattering the wood around the lock and sending the door into the room. The childish voice shrieked again, then settled back into sobs as Dick took in the scene.

The apartment inside was as devastated as the plaza below. Furniture was toppled throughout the room, and several chunks of both the ceiling and the floor were missing. Dick wondered if he could look down one of them and see the jewelry store. They had to be almost right above it.

None of which mattered as much as what was in the center of the room. A girl who could not have been more than six was kneeling next to a toppled bookcase, and it took Dick several moments to realize that there was an adult pinned under that bookcase.

The little girl looked up at them. "Mommy. She won't wake up."

Dick looked to Batman, who was already kneeling beside the woman. Batman didn't exactly cut the most comforting figure in the world, but the children of Gotham knew he was a Good Guy, and any reassurances should probably come from him instead of some random guy in goggles.

"Pulse is steady. We should move the bookcase together so it doesn't jar her."

Right. Dick knelt beside the little girl. "Hey, honey. What's your name?"

"Julie," she sniffled. A faint moan came from the mother, some mumbled words that might have contained her daughter's name.

"Okay, Julie. We're going to help your mommy, but we need you to stand…" Dick looked around for the safest spot. "Right over there in that corner, okay?"

Julie nodded solemnly, and padded over to the corner. Her pajamas had circus tents on them, and Dick smiled.

The woman under the bookcase moaned again, this time clearly becoming more conscious. Dick took his place at the corner opposite Batman, and together, they lifted the bookcase free. A few small knickknacks fell to the floor as they lifted, and Dick kept the thought that it was lucky the family didn't keep actual _books_ on their bookshelves to himself.

"Ju…lie?" The woman on the floor began struggling to sit up.

Batman looked down towards the woman, then back to Dick, who nodded to indicate he could finish settling the shelves. It took some doing - the case was heavy, and the floor too uneven to trust – but eventually he got it settled in its side out of the way. He was just turning around when a delighted "Mommy!" and the sound of small feet made him turn instead to scoop up Julie before she could run onto broken porcelain. 

"Easy, kiddo," he said, setting her down by her mother. He looked at Batman questioningly. 

"It looks like a mild concussion. No apparent back injury."

"Any ideas on how we should get them out of here? Somehow I don't think leaving them here would be the safest thing." The sirens were already wailing in the distance, and Dick was trying very hard not to think about what the rest of the city must look like.

As if to taunt him, the building rumbled around them, and the floor lurched. Sharing a wordless glance with Batman, Dick scooped up Julie. "Stairwell it is, then. How strong's that line of yours?"

Dick started down first, Julie wrapped around him in the iron grip only small children and the occasional mutant criminal could manage.

"Just hold on," he told her, lowering them both carefully down the stairwell. It was going to take a bit of a swing to get them to doorway, and there would be some balancing to do, but as long as Julie held on…

"Are you Batman's helper?"

Okay, letting go of the rope now would be a bad thing. "What?"

"My daddy says Batman must have lots of people helping him 'cause he couldn't do all that stuff by himself. Are you his helper?"

Dick smiled over her shoulder. "I guess you could say I am." Tonight, anyway.

Getting Julie's mother down was a bit trickier. She didn't have any broken bones, but she was still too woozy to trust her grip on either of them or a rope. In the end, it took two lines, three handoffs, and a few minutes during which Dick was extremely grateful that he had no fear of heights to get her to the plaza.

Getting them both outside was easy enough. It was amazing how much easier it was to get out of a locked building when you didn't have to worry about alarms.

The city was burning.

Dick removed his goggles, hoping that somehow the scene would look better. It didn't, of course. It looked worse.

"Good God," Julie's mother said beside him. "How… What… Where do we even go?"

"Follow the fire engine lights," Batman answered. "There will be emergency personnel there. They'll be able to help you." He sounded far surer than the situation warranted, but Dick supposed he was trying to be helpful.

She nodded and took Julie's hand, starting towards the nearest flashes of red lights. Julie waved as they walked away.

Dick watched them until they were around the corner, then turned to Batman. He couldn't see the man's eyes through his cowl, but there was no mistaking the downward turn of his mouth and the slump in his shoulders.

Dick took a deep breath. "So," he said, "where do we start?"

Batman frowned. "What?"

"Where do we start? I mean, there are probably more people in the building, but is there somewhere else more critical we should go first?" _And I swear to God if you ask me why I'm doing this I_ will _hit you which would be dumb because a broken hand wouldn't do either of us much good right now._

Batman looked at him for a moment, then nodded and pulled something off of his belt. It was a T-line, just like the one he'd used earlier in the stairwell. "You know how to use that." It wasn't a question.

Dick grinned. "Since I was twelve."

Batman's helper. For tonight, anyway.


	4. In the Center Ring

It had been a lovely service. Everyone agreed on that. Keeping it private had been something of a struggle, especially with the new district attorney determined to make the tragedy a cause celebre in his fight against Gotham's dwindling organized crime empires -- which in reality was only his excuse for not dealing with the more pressing issue of the criminal freaks who were a far greater menace. It had taken a fair amount of carny guile, a direct refusal from the family's sole survivor, an hour-long argument with the police commissioner, and finally a discreet suggestion from Bruce Wayne that his actions might come back to haunt him come election time to dissuade DA Chalmers from turning the small funeral into a media, well, circus.

Two coffins stood in the center of the small tent, supported by brightly painted barrels, surrounded by people in bright costumes and face paint, and even a few of the tamer animals. One by one, each of the circus members stepped forward to share a memory, an insight, or just a moment of grief. Beppo the Clown had only stood silently for a moment, but the grief evident even through the painted smile said enough. Always two or three of them remained by the surviving family member, who stood straight and unblinking, refusing all offers of physical support.

No one heard the movement outside the tent, or saw the figure who stood in the darkness just close enough to hear. He did not intrude. There was no reason. It was just another tragedy, just another crime he had been unable to prevent. A small boy had performed an impossible feat to reach the safety of his father's hands, only for them to plummet together when a rope snapped. Tonight a woman mourned her husband and son, and he had not been able to stop it from happening. The wrong man had been there, and the one who might have stopped it had been kept away by the requirements of a façade whose purpose was increasingly unclear.

Just two more deaths in a city filled with them.


	5. Dynasty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Building a dynasty.

_"Richard Grayson!"_

The whoops and whistles were as restrained as could be expected under the circumstances, as were the eye rolls from a few of the other graduating cadets. Dick hadn't bothered asking the attending cops to keep their reactions to a minimum, although he suspected Jim might have. All things considered, his progress through the Gotham Police Academy had been smoother than he had any right to expect: almost no real favoritism and only a couple of instructors who'd felt the need to prove their impartiality by being extra hard on him. The jokes about crime-fighting dynasties were old before the first week was out, but Dick had gamely smiled at each new version. He figured he'd owed them that much; it couldn't be easy having the Commissioner's kid in class.

The rest of the ceremony went off without a hitch. Commandant Marshall's speech was blessedly short; he looked a bit nervous with so many officers in attendance. Jim Gordon was a usual figure, but he tended to stand discreetly in the background, not sit right up front with a cadre of detectives and the odd relation or two. Rumor among the cadets was that Marshall had been up until the wee hours trying to think of something new to say in lieu of the speech he'd been giving Gotham's new finest since roughly 1978.

"Officer Grayson!" Barbara swooped down on him, leaping into his arms in a completely undignified manner.

"Agent Gordon," he returned, hugging her back. "Do your superiors know you randomly accost local law enforcement?"

"They make special exceptions for family." Barbara looked tired, and with good reason: the FBI's Computer Fraud Division had just wrapped up a major bust, and she'd probably flown to Gotham straight from headquarters. He also suspected she'd made a few deals in order to get here. 

"You know, I'd have understood if you couldn't make it."

She grinned. "The President himself couldn't have kept me away today." 

"Dick." It was Jim, somberly offering his hand. "I want you to know that I'm very, very proud of you," he said as Dick took it. "I've heard nothing but good things, and I'm sure you'll be a credit to the department." He broke into a grin. "Ah, heck with it." He pulled Dick into a rough hug. "Good job, son."

"Thanks, Dad." It wasn't a word he used often. It had always come more easily to Barbara, even though he'd been taken into the Gordon's home at a much younger age, after his parents were killed. Jim had never given any indication that it bothered him, though. 

"I should go congratulate Commandant Marshall on a particularly enthralling speech," Jim said with a wink. He clasped Dick's shoulder briefly. "Back in a minute." 

Barbara watched him go, clearly waiting until he was out of earshot to pull something from her purse. "Before I forget," she said, handing a greeting card to Dick, "James sent this to me and asked me to give it to you."

The card had a zebra on the front saying, "You really earned your stripes. Congratulations!" 

_Hey bro,_ the inside said. _Sorry I couldn't make it, but school and all. You're going to make a great cop. Love, James._

Dick repressed a sigh. It would have been nice to see James, and he knew full well it wasn't school that kept him away. However much James's mother complained about him never seeing his family, she'd rather eat ground glass than let him come to Gotham, a city that in her mind personified all that was wrong with the world.

"His class is taking a trip to Washington at the end of the school year," Barbara said. "If you can get the time off, maybe we can meet him for dinner. I'm sure Aunt Barbara would ask the school to let us take him for one evening."

Dick looked up from the card and was not surprised to see a melancholy expression on Barbara's face. "Stop it," he said fondly.

To her credit, she didn't fake ignorance, just bapped him on the shoulder. Someday he'd find the right words to convince her that she wasn't to blame for the disintegration of the Gordon family, that even if by some wild stretch of the imagination she could take responsibility for her parents dying in a car accident and leaving her care to Jim, the marriage had been well on the way to ending before she arrived. Taking in Dick had been a last-ditch effort to save it, and one that had been doomed from the start. Someday Barbara would stop seeing herself as the straw that broke the camel's back -- probably around the time she stopped blaming herself for the three days Dick had spent back in the Gotham City Home for Boys when Social Services decided an unmarried, male police officer couldn't handle the burden of two children, and that since Barbara was his niece by blood, Dick was the one who had to go.

Someone, somewhere, had pulled some very long strings to undo that. 

They were possibly the same long strings that had gotten the FBI to give a pretty 22-year-old woman with an impressive education a fair shot at applying. It was no great secret in Gotham that the Gordon family had a guardian angel -- although Dick suspected their guardian was a winged creature of another sort.

Dick discreetly slipped the card back in its envelope as Jim approached, this time with Sergeant Bullock in tow.

"Hey, kid," Bullock said, slapping Dick on the back hard enough to nearly knock him over. "Congrats! A bunch of us are going down to Kelly's Plough. How's about you come with and let the old guys buy you a beer?"

Dick looked questioningly at Jim, who smiled and nodded.

"Sure," he replied. "You can fill me in on all the dirt the old man won't tell me."

"Hey! Watch it with the old!"

Dick tucked the card from James into his cap for safe keeping. He owed his brother a letter, and he'd be sure to get to it later. 

Right now, he was going to have a beer with Gotham's finest.


End file.
